In the 2 ½ years I’ve been blogging at SolarChargedDriving.Com, I’ve been pretty hard on gas hogging automobiles and Americans’ strong tendency to buy a lot of them.

News that light trucks accounted for 55% of new vehicle sales in the U.S. in December would seem like another prime opportunity to take another shot at American short-sightedness and selfishness.

But I’m not going to hop on the slam-the-gas-hog-buyers express this time.

A push to eliminate the $7,500 federal tax credit for EVs would take the charge out of the Nissan LEAF and many other plug-ins, which would become thoroughly unaffordable for millions more Americans.

Just what we don’t need: A U.S. Congressman pushing to eliminate the $7,500 federal tax credit right at the time that EVs are starting to take off in the U.S.

Yet that’s exactly what we have in H.R. 3768, a piece of legislation introduced by Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Mike Kelly that would repeal the $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicle buyers.

As Inhabit.Com pointed out today, it’s surely no coincidence that Kelly, who’s worth about $34 million and is one of the 25 richest members of Congress, made most of his money investing in – you guessed it -- oil and gas stocks!

A statue of a manatee with giant coal plant smokestacks in the background at the Manatee Viewing Center at the Tampa Electric Co. Big Bend Power Plant in Central Florida. [Photo Credit: Christof Demont-Heinrich]

The world is full of plenty of stark nature/humankind contrasts -- and I just saw one this morning in Florida, where we are spending a week with my mother-in-law in Ruskin.

Ruskin isn't far from a Tampa Electric Company (TECO) coal power plant that's probably more well known for the manatees that winter in the warm waters produced by the plant than for the electricity it produces.